Fwashback (narrative)

A fwashback (sometimes cawwed an anawepsis) is an interjected scene dat takes de narrative back in time from de current point in de story.[1] Fwashbacks are often used to recount events dat happened before de story's primary seqwence of events to fiww in cruciaw backstory.[2] In de opposite direction, a fwashforward (or prowepsis) reveaws events dat wiww occur in de future.[3] Bof fwashback and fwashforward are used to cohere a story, devewop a character, or add structure to de narrative. In witerature, internaw anawepsis is a fwashback to an earwier point in de narrative; externaw anawepsis is a fwashforward to a time before de narrative started.[4]

In fiwm, fwashbacks depict de subjective experience of a character by showing a memory of a previous event and dey are often used to "resowve an enigma".[5] Fwashbacks are important in fiwm noir and mewodrama fiwms. [6] In movies and tewevision, severaw camera techniqwes, editing approaches and speciaw effects have evowved to awert de viewer dat de action shown is a fwashback or fwashforward; for exampwe, de edges of de picture may be dewiberatewy bwurred, photography may be jarring or choppy, or unusuaw coworation or sepia tone, or monochrome when most of de story is in fuww cowor, may be used. The scene may fade or dissowve, often wif de camera focused on de face of de character and dere is typicawwy a voice-over by a narrator (who is often, but not awways, de character who is experiencing de memory).[7]

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An earwy exampwe of anawepsis is in de Ramayana and Mahabharata, where de main story is narrated drough a frame story set at a water time. Anoder ancient exampwe occurs in de Odyssey, in which de tawe of Odysseus' wanderings is towd in fwashback by Odysseus to a wistener. Anoder earwy use of dis device in a murder mystery was in "The Three Appwes", an Arabian Nights tawe. The story begins wif de discovery of a young woman's dead body. After de murderer water reveaws himsewf, he narrates his reasons for de murder in a series of fwashbacks weading up to de discovery of her dead body at de beginning of de story.[8] Fwashbacks are awso empwoyed in severaw oder Arabian Nights tawes such as "Sinbad de Saiwor" and "The City of Brass".

Anawepsis was used extensivewy by audor Ford Madox Ford, and by poet, audor, historian and mydowogist Robert Graves. The 1927 book The Bridge of San Luis Rey by Thornton Wiwder is de progenitor of de modern disaster epic in witerature and fiwm-making, where a singwe disaster intertwines de victims, whose wives are den expwored by means of fwashbacks of events weading up to de disaster. Anawepsis is awso used in Night by Ewie Wiesew. If fwashbacks are extensive and in chronowogicaw order, one can say dat dese form de present of de story, whiwe de rest of de story consists of fwash forwards. If fwashbacks are presented in non-chronowogicaw order, de time at which de story takes pwace can be ambiguous: An exampwe of such an occurrence is in Swaughterhouse-Five where de narrative jumps back and forf in time, so dere is no actuaw present time wine. Os Lusíadas is a story about voyage of Vasco da Gama to India and back. The narration starts when dey were arriving Africa but it qwickwy fwashes back to de beginning of de story which is when dey were weaving Portugaw.[9]

The Harry Potter series empwoys a magicaw device cawwed a Pensieve, which changes de nature of fwashbacks from a mere narrative device to an event directwy experienced by de characters, which are dus abwe to provide commentary.[10]

The creator of de fwashback techniqwe in cinema was Histoire d’un crime directed by Ferdinand Zecca in 1901. [11] Fwashbacks were first empwoyed during de sound era in Rouben Mamouwian's 1931 fiwm City Streets, but were rare untiw about 1939 when, in Wiwwiam Wywer's Wudering Heights as in Emiwy Brontë's originaw novew, de housekeeper Ewwen narrates de main story to overnight visitor Mr. Lockwood, who has witnessed Headcwiff's frantic pursuit of what is apparentwy a ghost. More famouswy, awso in 1939, Marcew Carné's movie Le Jour Se Lève is towd awmost entirewy drough fwashback: de story starts wif de murder of a man in a hotew. Whiwe de murderer, pwayed by Jean Gabin, is surrounded by de powice, severaw fwashbacks teww de story of why he kiwwed de man at de beginning of de movie.

One of de most famous exampwes of a fwashback is in de Orson Wewwes' fiwm Citizen Kane (1941). The protagonist, Charwes Foster Kane, dies at de beginning, uttering de word Rosebud. The remainder of de fiwm is framed by a reporter's interviewing Kane's friends and associates, in a futiwe effort to discover what de word meant to Kane. As de interviews proceed, pieces of Kane's wife unfowd in fwashback, but Wewwes' use of such unconventionaw fwashbacks was dought to have been infwuenced by Wiwwiam K. Howard's The Power and de Gwory. Hitchcock used a fwashback in Marnie (1956) to reveaw de enigma dat wed to psychowogicaw disturbances for de femawe wead; as wif Wewwes' fiwm, he dewayed de fwashback untiw de end of de movie.[12]

Though usuawwy used to cwarify pwot or backstory, fwashbacks can awso act as an unrewiabwe narrator. Awfred Hitchcock's Stage Fright from 1950 notoriouswy featured a fwashback dat did not teww de truf but dramatized a wie from a witness. The muwtipwe and contradictory staged reconstructions of a crime in Errow Morris's 1988 documentary The Thin Bwue Line are presented as fwashbacks based on divergent testimony. Akira Kurosawa's 1950 Rashomon does dis in de most cewebrated fictionaw use of contested muwtipwe testimonies.

Sometimes a fwashback is inserted into a fiwm even dough dere was none in de originaw source from which de fiwm was adapted. The 1956 fiwm version of Rodgers and Hammerstein's stage musicaw Carousew used a fwashback device which somewhat takes de impact away from a very dramatic pwot devewopment water in de fiwm. This was done because de pwot of Carousew was den considered unusuawwy strong for a fiwm musicaw. In fiwm version of Camewot (1967), according to Awan Jay Lerner, a fwashback was added not to soften de bwow of a water pwot devewopment but because de stage show had been criticized for shifting too abruptwy in tone from near-comedy to tragedy.

A good exampwe of bof fwashback and fwashforward is de first scene of La Jetée (1962). As we wearn a few minutes water, what we are seeing in dat scene is a fwashback to de past, since de present of de fiwm's diegesis is a time directwy fowwowing Worwd War III. However, as we wearn at de very end of de fiwm, dat scene awso doubwes as a prowepsis, since de dying man de boy is seeing is, in fact, himsewf. In oder words, he is prowepticawwy seeing his own deaf. We dus have an anawepsis and prowepsis in de very same scene.

Occasionawwy, a story may contain a fwashback widin a fwashback, wif de earwiest known exampwe appearing in Jacqwes Feyder's L'Atwantide. Littwe Annie Rooney (1925) contains a fwashback scene in a Chinese waundry, wif a fwashback widin dat fwashback in de corner of de screen, uh-hah-hah-hah. In John Ford's The Man Who Shot Liberty Vawance (1962), de main action of de fiwm is towd in fwashback, wif de scene of Liberty Vawance's murder occurring as a fwashback widin dat fwashback. Oder exampwes dat contains fwashbacks widin fwashbacks are de 1968 Japanese fiwmLone Wowf Isazo[14] and 2004's The Phantom of de Opera, where awmost de entire fiwm (set in 1870) is towd as a fwashback from 1919 (in bwack-and-white) and contains oder fwashbacks; for exampwe, Madame Giry rescuing de Phantom from a freak show. An extremewy convowuted story may contain fwashbacks widin fwashbacks widin fwashbacks, as in Six Degrees of Separation, Passage to Marseiwwe, and The Locket. This techniqwe is a hawwmark of Kannada movie director Upendra whose futuristic fwick Super (2010) is set in 2030 and contains muwtipwe fwashbacks ranging from 2010 to 2015 depicting a utopian India.

Quentin Tarantino makes extensive use of de fwashback and fwashforward in many of his fiwms. In Reservoir Dogs (1992), for exampwe, scenes of de story present are intercut wif various fwashbacks to give each character's backstory and motivation additionaw context. In Puwp Fiction (1994), which uses a highwy nonwinear narrative, traditionaw fwashback is awso used in de seqwence titwed "The Gowd Watch". Oder fiwms, such as his two-part Kiww Biww (Part I 2003, Part II 2004), awso feature a narrative dat bounces between present time and fwashbacks.